Georgia Gould is a farmer at heart, and her backyard is like a small farm. She has chickens, honey bees and a vegetable garden. Gould, 32, is preparing for her second Olympiad. She placed eighth in mountain biking in Beijing in 2008 but is a strong candidate to medal this time.

Georgia Gould trains for the London Games near her home in Fort Collins.

FORT COLLINS — Georgia Gould gives a warning when she leads a visitor to her backyard. Try not to be alarmed if one of the neighborhood foxes leaps over her fence, she says. They’re just after the chickens she and her husband have.

Oh, and there are bees. Lots of bees. Gould watched a documentary about the dying bee population in the United States and in the spring started her own beehive. For those living near her funky red house in Fort Collins and are into fresh biscuits, honey is expected next year.

“I’m doing my part!” she says with a laugh.

This adopted Coloradan from Baltimore via Sun Valley, Idaho, is into the environment and into another Colorado endeavor. Gould is Colorado’s queen bee of mountain biking. Change that. She’s the queen bee for the United States, which she will represent for the second straight Olympics next month in London.

She has grown so much since 2008, a disastrous year in which she went from near death on a sun-baked mountain in Southern California to disappointment in a sweatbox of an Olympic course in Beijing.

This time Gould, 32, has a shot at an Olympic medal. She has made the podium in seven races and has beaten every other top mountain biker in the world. And she won’t spend another second in awe of the five Olympic rings.

“I know I’m capable of medaling, and I raced at the test event on the Olympic course last year and had a great race,” said Gould, sitting at her backyard table. “There’s a few more factors that give me some confidence going into the race.”

Here’s one: She’s alive.

In May 2008, two months before her first Olympics, that wasn’t a sure bet. She had a two-minute lead with about 10 minutes left in the Santa Ynez Valley Classic. She had cycled about an hour and 40 minutes in 105-degree heat on one of the Santa Ynez Mountains, a group of bone-dry, near-barren mounds of dirt north of Santa Barbara.

“You know how you get to the top of a hill and there’s like a breeze to cool you off?” she said. “There it was like you get to the top and it was like opening the oven and having hot air rush out at you. It was that hot.”

It was too hot for Gould. Going up her last hill, she began cramping. She got off the bike and started pushing it.

That’s the last thing she remembers.

“The next person in second place finishes the race and they’re like, ‘Wait a minute. Did you see Georgia out there?’ ” she said. ” ‘Yeah, I think she got a flat. She was looking at her bike.’ The next person comes in and, ‘Did you see Georgia?’ ‘Oh, she was throwing up.’ Then the next person comes in: ‘She was cheering for me.’ “

Gould was delirious, rolling around in the bushes covered in burrs and grass seeds. On the way to a hospital, she couldn’t tell doctors what year it was.

“I felt like I was (dying) in the ambulance,” she said.

The timing could not have been worse. She still had to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. That meant competing in a couple more World Cup races in steaming Europe.

She did, but then came Beijing, with humidity more suited for African violets than human life. But learning — the hard way — how to pace herself in searing heat, she conquered the elements if not the field, finishing eighth.

“People are like, ‘Oh, you finished eighth!’ ” she said. “For me, that was not what I was capable of or hoping for. It was just a combination of the whole stress of being there for the first time. When I first got there to the Olympic Village, my first thought was, ‘I’m so glad I did not know how cool this is because I would’ve been way more concerned about qualifying.’ “

London will be different. Barring an evolutionary meltdown, it will be cooler. The U.S. mountain biking team will be based near the course located by the ruins of 797-year-old Hadleigh Castle, 30 miles northeast of London in Essex County.

They won’t be near the Olympic hype. With their race not until Aug. 11, the second-to-last day of the Games, the team won’t arrive until the week before and will miss the opening ceremony.

Gould discounts it with a shrug. This trip will be all business.

“Now I have four more years of elite-level racing under my belt,” she said, “so I’m a much more experienced racer, just in terms of my training, my tactics, my skills, all that stuff I feel I’ve improved a lot the last four years.”

And her medal chances?

“They’re excellent,” said her Westminster-based coach, Ben Ollett. “A gold medal is definitely a goal. Any medal would be great, but we’re racing for the win.”

WASHINGTON — Thirty games into the 82-game NHL season, and nearly six weeks after the Matt Duchene trade, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic discussed the state of his team before Tuesday’s 5-2 loss at the Washington Capitals.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The Rockies continued to bolster their bullpen Wednesday by agreeing to a contract to bring left-handed reliever Jake McGee back to Colorado. A major-league source confirmed the news, but the Rockies have not made the signing official.